Very Good Friends

We met every Thursday for breakfast. We’d tell each other about our weeks, especially about the challenges we faced in our jobs. We shared our private pains and special joys with one another.

Nothing could harm our friendship. After all, we were both pastors.

My friend was the associate pastor at his church, filling in while the senior pastor was in the hospital for months. While he had ideas for his church, he didn’t feel right implementing them while his pastor – and supervisor – was incapacitated. The months dragged on, but the senior pastor just wasn’t given the green light to return. The church got into dire straits financially and began to spiral downward. Some of the governing leaders in my friend’s church wanted him to ignore the pastor’s plight and lead the church ahead, but my friend felt that was a breach of ethics.

A tough, tough situation.

I was pastoring my first church a few miles away, and it was slow going. I was under thirty, most of the people in the church were over sixty, and there were few people in-between. I was reaching mostly people my age, and when my generation gained as many people as the over sixty group, power struggles began to emerge. Since the church had booted their previous pastor, I thought I might be next.

Then one day, my friend called to tell me that a leader from his church proposed that our two churches merge. There were about 80 people in my friend’s church and about 50 in ours. Their building was paid for while we met in a school multi-purpose room that was scheduled to be bulldozed down by the school district. We needed a building. They needed more people and money.

Merger talks began.

Then the senior pastor from my friend’s church suddenly got well enough to attend a few merger meetings. Somewhere along the line, he just disappeared.

While the boards from the two churches began merger negotiations, my friend and I continued to share how we felt about everything. We both agreed that we would look for pastoral positions outside of the proposed merged church. Neither one of us really wanted to pastor it. I had read that in many cases, merger math is 1+1=1. In other words, if you put a church of 80 and a church of 50 together, when the dust settles, you’ll have a church not of 130 but of 80.

So my friend began looking around, and a church in the Northwest expressed interest in having him as pastor. I too began looking around, but the right situation didn’t open up for me. I did not want to be the pastor of the new merged church. I wanted to go elsewhere.

The board from our church gave the board from the other church one condition for merging: I had to become the new senior pastor. The board from my friend’s church evidently wanted me to be the pastor as well – but I didn’t want the job.

My friend accepted the call to the Northwest church, and I was glad for him. I still hoped I could find another ministry somewhere else. But in the end, I didn’t. On October 2 – the deadline set by the new board – I signed an agreement that made me the senior pastor of the new church.

My friend was convinced that “the fix was in.” He believed that since he found another ministry, I should have done the same. And I tried. I really did.

He never spoke to me again.

I don’t think I’ve ever publicly told this story before even though it happened 28 years ago. Why not? Because I lost a friend – a good one – and for a long time, just thinking about it caused me great pain.

And I’m sure it caused my friend pain as well. It’s hard to lose a close friend like that, no matter what you do for a living.

But how can two pastors – of all people – part ways like that?

There’s a story in Acts that many of us have read. Paul took Barnabas on his first missionary journey, and they also took along Barnabas’ cousin John Mark (author of Mark’s Gospel). During that initial adventure, John Mark left the two missionaries and returned to Jerusalem. When the duo planned their second journey, Barnabas wanted to take along John Mark again, but Paul refused, believing that John Mark would probably desert them again. Barnabas wanted to give his cousin a second chance and was willing to vouch for him. Paul was the task-oriented leader, Barnabas the people-centered encourager.

Dr. Luke writes in Acts 15:39, “They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company.”

How could Paul – writer of half the New Testament, church planter deluxe, the chief proponent of divine reconciliation – sever a friendship with his mentor and colleague? Shouldn’t they have hung around and tried to settle their differences before doing the Lord’s work?

When Paul returned to the churches he had planted on his first journey, some of the believers undoubtedly asked, “Hey, Paul, where’s your companion Barnabas?” I doubt if Paul wanted to explain why his friend didn’t come on the trip. Barnabas probably received similar queries anyplace they knew Paul.

Later in Paul’s ministry, he had positive words for both Barnabas and John Mark, although the latter doesn’t appear until 2 Timothy 4, the last chapter Paul ever wrote. But thank God, everybody reconciled in the end. Yet had Paul or Barnabas died first, they might have never have worked things out.

It’s ironic, but church ministry causes pastors to both make and lose friends. Pastors make friends primarily with those with whom they serve: staff members, board members, key leaders, and ministry team leaders. Friendships are forged as believers march together toward a common vision. During such times, it’s natural to think, “We will always be friends.”

But sometimes disagreements surface between the pastor and a leader. Sometimes the pastor feels he has to talk to a leader about their ministry and that leader becomes upset. Sometimes the pastor believes he has to intervene in a leader’s life because he sees self-destructive tendencies. There are even times when a pastor notices that a ministry is repelling people rather than attracting them and he feels the need to intervene.

When a pastor takes any of these actions, he risks his friendship with that leader. Why? Because he has to balance that friendship against Christ’s command to make disciples.

I’m writing about this because when a pastor is forcibly terminated, he isn’t sure he has any friends left in a church. He knows the governing leaders will put their own spin on his departure and that he may end up being portrayed as someone who is incompetent or unspiritual or even evil. He then has no idea who or how many people will end up believing what is said about him. Should he try and approach friends in the church, he may be rebuffed or even ostracized. The only way he really knows those friendships are intact is if his friends contact him and tell him that their friendship is still “on.”

I know about the loss of such friendships firsthand. During my last church ministry, I lost some good friends, most of them male. They chose to walk away for reasons of their own. While I’ve come to accept what they did, the severance of our friendships hurt a lot. On the whole, women were much more faithful and understanding. This parallels the sufferings of Jesus when His male disciples fled but His female friends stayed by the cross and tomb.

Being the pastor of a church is a tough job – and it’s getting tougher. People all come to church with their own expectations and impose them on the pastor, who can’t possibly meet each one. For this reason, your pastor needs your prayers, encouragement, and support.

And he also needs friends who – come what may – will stand by him, and stand strong with him, and see him for who he really is: a deeply flawed person called to advance the kingdom of God.

I recently had lunch with a man who has remained loyal to his senior pastor for forty years. Years ago, this man was the only staff member to stand up for his pastor when the rest of the staff banded together to get rid of him. That pastor and his staff member have provided leadership to their church which now impacts more than 15,000 people every weekend. Imagine what might have happened had that staff member not stood with his pastor.

Jesus told His disciples in the Upper Room, “You are those who have stood by me in my trials” (Luke 22:28). It meant the world to Jesus that in His hour of need, eleven of His twelve disciples still considered Him their friend.

Romans 12:18 says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

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One Response

I liked the tone of this article. My goal in life would be to stand up for Jesus no matter what.

But pastors and pastor wives too are only human beings – flaws and all – and I think if the congregation stepped into the pastors and his wives shoes for a time they would be amazed how many friends they might not have or friends who will stay with them through thick and thin.

I would encourage everyone in a church to love unconditionally their pastor and family.